Recent Headlines

There are some painful, but very important lessons to be learned from the unfavorable national publicity that followed the online posting of a video of a food fight at a local fast food restaurant. The fight involved students from rival high schools after a closely fought football game.

The video, which captured a 30-second food fight between Northside Independent School District students from Brandeis and O'Connor at a Whataburger on the city's Northwest Side and played on CNN and Headline News, was an embarrassment to the school district and the San Antonio community.

The spontaneous and immature emotional display disrupted business and caused the restaurant to close the dining area for 30 minutes to clean up.

It reflects badly on the students involved, and their brief lapse in judgment in participating in the food fight could haunt some of these students as they move forward in the adult world.

In another time, this would have been one of those incidents that parents and school administrators would have dealt with behind closed doors. Apologies would have been given and the requisite disciplinary action taken. In today's world, the video and the photographs will be around a long time on the Internet, accessible by scholarship committees and future employers.

Whataburger officials made the proper move in choosing not to press criminal charges; there is not much to be gained by filing a police complaint. The incident presents a good opportunity to remind all students of that old legal warning about “any thing you say and do can be used against you” is no longer just applicable to those who are under arrest.